Piers Akerman – Monday,November 12,2012 (4:09am)

AS expected the story of Julia Gillard’s association with the fraudulent union boss Bruce Wilson and the dodgy slush she set up for him is getting murkier.

Yesterday, on the ABC’s Insider program, host Barry Cassidy described the fund as a “trust fund”.

This was probably an innocent slip-up on Cassidy’s part, and easy to make. Slush fund is the expression Gillard used to describe the fund when she was quizzed about it by her surprised partners at Labor law firm Slater & Gordon before she left the firm.

However, on August 23, when The Australian’s reporter Ean Higgins used the same expression Prime Minister Julia Gillard telephoned a senior editorial executive at News Limited, the publisher of The Australian (and this blog) and demanded an instant online retraction and a printed apology – both of which she received.

Higgins mistake was just as innocent – but the inaccurate term hit a nerve.

He used it in a story which said “seventeen years ago, after Slater & Gordon grilled his lawyer girlfriend Julia Gillard” about a “trust fund she’d set up for him, and union bosses also started asking questions, up-and-coming labour leader Bruce Wilson knew one of them had to ride off into the sunset.

“As long as they remained together, for each the public presence of the other would always be a reminder to the media of the scandal in which Ms Gillard did free legal work for Mr Wilson to establish the trust that later turned out to be allegedly rorting funds. (The Prime Minister insists she had no knowledge at the time of any alleged fraud and strenuously denies any wrongdoing.)

“Mr Wilson, then a top Australian Workers Union official and rising star within the ALP touted as a possible future prime minister, has told his workmates he nobly made the call.

“‘He said to her, ‘It’s either me or you’,’ one of Mr Wilson’s bosses told The Australian yesterday.

‘"He said, ‘I’ll go’. Now she’s Prime Minister and he’s a cook.’”

“Ms Gillard’s stated version of the bust-up is a little different: she has said she was a‘young and naïve’ thing in her 30s when she fell for Mr Wilson, and flicked him when she discovered his other side. ‘I was in a relationship, which I ended, and obviously it was all very distressing,’ she said in 2007.

“‘I am by no means the first person to find out that someone close turns out to be different.’”

On August 24, the following apology appeared in the newspaper: “A article in The Australian yesterday ("An old flame faded into black”, Page 6) reported that Prime Minister Julia Gillard had set up a trust fund for her then boyfriend 17 years ago. This is wrong. The Australian apologises for the error.

The following day, August 25, David Crowe, the National Affairs Editor of the newspaper, reported that Gillard had called The Australian’s editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell, the previous Sunday night to find a way to end the coverage of the AWU Reform Association rort.

“Rather than answer the newspaper’s queries, she argued there was no point addressing the matter because every 20 questions she answered would only lead to 20 more questions. Previous disputes with News Limited—over reports by Glenn Milne in 2007 at The Sunday Telegraph and last year at The Australian—had led to similar phone calls. She seized on errors and called executives and editors to shut down the stories.

“Rightly or wrongly, Gillard and her chief-of-staff, Ben Hubbard, ended the Sunday night conversations under the impression that the story would fizzle out. There was a sense of dismay, however, as more details emerged during the week, including large parts of a transcript of Gillard’s formal interview with Slater & Gordon partner Peter Gordon and others on September 11, 1995.

“On Thursday she finally saw an opportunity to stage a forceful attack on all the reports. Up since 4am to scour the media, the Prime Minister’s team had found an error in one of The Australian’s stories where the ``slush fund’’ was referred to as a ‘trust fund’—a mistake that may seem minor but can mean the world to a lawyer.

“The mistake appeared in a report by one of Thomas’s colleagues that was not central to the AWU matter and was later described by Gillard herself later as a ‘Mills and Boon’ account of her personal life. For all that, however, the problem over one short word was enough for Gillard to challenge five days of reporting.

The newspaper reported that the Prime Minister had not sought an apology from The Sydney Morning Herald when it reported that her actions might have breached West Australian corporate law but she regarded The Australian’s mistake as an egregious error of fact.

It said that rather than contact The Australian she called News Limited group editorial director Campbell Reid at 9.15am and demanding an apology by 10am on all News websites.

Then she held the now notorious press conference at which she claims to have answered all the outstanding questions about the matter after being quizzed by reporters who were caught on the hop and unfamiliar with the detail of the scandal.

She didn’t give satisfactory answers but they were not to know.

She still hasn’t, of course, and nor have her former partners at Slater & Gordon.

But my question is has she asked Barrie to apologise?

As of last night, there was nothing on the ABC website to indicate that there was anything untoward about the Insiders program.The prime minister’s senior communications director John McTernan watched the show, why hasn’t the ABC been treated in the same manner as The Australian?

Is it because the ABC is seen as a “friendly” outlet and that its errors should be ignored while those which are made by other media outlets are to be prosecuted?

It certainly looks as if there is one rule for the ABC and another for everyone else under this Labor-Green-Independent minority government.(In an earlier edition, Higgins was described as Canberra-based. He is in fact based in Sydney.)

The rise follows then prime minister Kevin Rudd’s unveiling in 2008 of a $6 billion plan to halve homelessness by 2020 and offer crisis accommodation to every person sleeping rough. Mr Rudd had promised in his first month in the job to make the issue a priority.

The Prime Minister said the terms of reference for the royal commission would be worked on in coming weeks, before the persons to lead the inquiry were appointed.

“I want to get this right,” Ms Gillard said in Canberra.

“So, over the next few weeks, we will be consulting with the organisations that represent the survivors of child abuse, with religious organisations, with state and territory governments, to ensure the terms of reference are right.”

The inquiry will not be confined to the Catholic Church, but extend to all religious organisations and to children in state care, and into other institutions including schools.

With inquiries having been started in Victoria and - of a limited kind - in NSW anyway, it made sense to have a national inquiry into institutions that were themselves national.

The allegations have been so persistent that even the churches - especially the Catholic - should know now that nothing short of a royal commission can stop the damage done to them, let alone heal in some way that done to the children.

Mind you, I can also see the appeal to some in Labor in having lots of stories appear in election year on evil Catholics. Tony Abbott had no choice but to back this royal commission, even if he had any doubts about what it would achieve. And we should be wary of any attempt to make an inquiry into the abuse of children - an inquiry into a genuine evil - be used to attack Catholicism itself.

THE nation’s most powerful Catholic, George Pell, has revealed he is deeply ashamed at the child sex abuse committed within the church, but denied there was sufficient evidence to justify a royal commission into these assaults.

Cardinal Pell told The Weekend Australian yesterday he accepted children were abused by priests, and that this was then covered up by other clergy, but these crimes were largely historic and not part of a systemic failing within the church.

“It wasn’t just the Catholic Church that hoped (an abusive priest) would amend their conduct and give them a home somewhere else,” he said.

“Back in those days, they were entitled to think of pedophilia as simply a sin that you would repent of. They didn’t realise that in the worst cases it was an addiction, a raging addiction.”

THE last time a journalist claimed in error Julia Gillard had been involved in setting up a “trust fund” for boyfriend Bruce Wilson and his AWU chums—rather than a “slush fund”—a flurry of activity, including a press conference of more than an hour’s duration, followed. When Barrie Cassidy repeated the blunder on ABC TV’s The Insiders yesterday . . . nothing. No call from the PM’s office. Just silence. Cassidy was unaware of his slip until Strewth called. “Have fun with it,” he manfully commented.

A claim was first published by News Limited in relation to me and funds during the election campaign in 2007. On that occasion, the claim was retracted and apologised for. The claim was made again by Glenn Milne, a then columnist with the Australian newspaper, such a dim view was taken of his conduct in relation to that matter his employment was terminated.

Despite these events, a similar claim has been recirculated by the Australian newspaper today. People may have already seen that the claim has been retracted and apologised for and that retraction and apology appears on the Australian web site and as I understand it on all News Limited web sites…

Given we have got to a stage where false and defamatory material is now being recycled in the Australian newspaper; I’ll make this an opportunity to ask questions if people have them on their mind. This will be the only occasion on which I deal with this matter. I am not going to dignify it by ongoing answering of questions…

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, ... can I just clarify the terms of the apology today – if we had called the ‘trust fund’ a ‘slush fund’, the story would have been correct, wouldn’t it?

PM: No.

JOURNALIST: And my advice is that the newspaper stands by every other word of its coverage.

PM: Well, good defence for a newspaper that’s apologised today for a clear error that it published first in 2007 and had to rush to change its second editions because it recognised it was defamatory and wrong and that it subsequently sacked a senior commentator over.

Good defence, Sid, but it’s very, very hard to explain why, three times, these defamatory allegations would come around when on every occasion News Limited has ended up apologising for them and retracting them. That’s a matter for News Limited and for its internal processes to work through.

If the use of the word “trust fund” is so extremely defamatory as the Prime Minister pretended in August, why is Barrie Cassidy not corrected in November?

I have changed only a few identifying details (in bold) in this apologia on the unusually sympathetic Sydney Morning Herald website:

The worst thing is, News Corp’s injury is wholly self-inflicted. There [was] just a really terrible bit of journalism by the News of the World itself… They have cost the career of Rebekah Brooks, and there could be more blood-letting nowshe has gone.

It’s no use those who work for Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd pointing out that it had nothing to do with the twin disasters, which were entirely due to News of the World. The standards of News Corp’s Australian newspapers remain as high as ever, even if the whole News Corp has been tarnished by what happened. But the damage has been done.

What ought to happen now? Rupert Murdoch, whose own position as News Corp chairman may depend on it, talks of “a thorough, radical, structural overhaul”.

It may look good if more senior people resign, but the only effect it will have will be to make the people who take their place more timid. If it happens, it will be a copout. What is required is a change in the way News and Current Affairs, and perhaps other parts of News Corp, are controlled. Murdoch‘s accounts of why he didn’t know what was going on were horribly embarrassing, but the fact is that the News Corp chairman is no more aware of the day-to-day routines of reporting than the prime minister is of the way the civil service runs.

To paraphrase the Prime Minister: “I do believe Australians, watching all of thathappening overseas with the BBC, are looking at the ABC here and wanting to see the ABC answer some hard questions.”

Well, it seems fair enough. Previous events in the UK, after all, led to a media inquiry in Australia. And the ABC does broadcast a substantial amount of BBC-sourced content and employs a number of ex-BBC staffers. By the Prime Minister’s own standards, we need a further probe to ensure that the BBC’s lamentable journalism has no influence here:

Of course, one critical difference is the BBC is of the Left, and the ABC is friendly to Labor.

Years ago the Malaysian tycoon Ananda Krishnan told me that while Australian journalists like to report in shocked tones on government corruption in Asia, they seemed only too oblivious of the potential for corruption back home at the state government level. (He said federal government ministers had far fewer opportunities to trade favors for cash.)

At the beginning of an opening statement expected to run for the rest of the day, counsel assisting the Independent Commission Against Corruption, Geoffrey Watson, SC, has alleged the family of former Labor minister Eddie Obeid may have realised profits of as much as $100 million from alleged favouritism on the part of Mr Macdonald.

Mr Watson said that, in one set of transactions alone, an investment by the Obeid family in a company later granted an exploration license may have yielded at profit of $60 million for an initial outlay of just $200,000.

The ICAC inquiry is examining the granting of a number of licenses in the Bylong Valley, near Mudgee in central NSW.

Mr Watson said Mr Obeid bought a farm in the area for about $3 million that more than quadrupled in value after the area was opened up for coal mining by Mr Macdonald.

He said Mr Macdonald kept state cabinet and Labor caucus “in the dark” regarding the effect of his decisions on Mr Obeid, during a period both men were colleagues in the state upper house.

Mr Watson said the effect of Mr Macdonald’s actions was that assets that could have benefited the people of NSW “have been taken away from the people of NSW and given away to friends . . . of the minister.”

He said Mr Macdonald’s actions might be explained by “bad governing”, but might also be explained by corruption.

The Obama victory was a case study in coalition-building across a range of voter demographics: a ‘’base-plus’’ strategy… [Abbott will] need policy and presentation appealing to moderates as well as conservatives.

Climate change is one issue that could get interesting between now and the Australian federal election in 2013. Obama keeps bringing it up.

There’s speculation carbon pricing is back on the agenda in the US, either as a revenue raising measure (and God knows they need revenue), or as an Obamacare ‘’vision thing’’ equivalent to rally the progressive base.

Could this be a global game-changer in 2013, validating Australia’s early action; indeed, validating John Howard’s old arguments about the merits of first-mover advantage? Good news for Malcolm Turnbull. Less good for Tony Abbott.

In fact, Romney is a warning against elevating the Left’s favorite Opposition politician. Romney was nevertheless attacked by the media as the too-rich, out-of-touch flip-flopper with extremists in his ranks. While Obama’s vote fell, Romney lost the Republican votes he needed to win. Didn’t charm the Left, and couldn’t inspire the base.

And, Katharine, it’s always a temptation to see evil in your ideological foes and only virtue in your friends, as you do here:

It’s kind of cheery to see the boorish, partisan bullies taken down a peg.

There are boors and partisans on both sides. This very piece of yours is partisan, or hadn’t you noticed? But watch one of Obama’s ads on Romney. Look especially at the slogan at the end. And then tell me that’s not disturbingly divisive. Tell me how you’d feel had the Republicans used that slogan against Obama:

The Woman’s Weekly profile looks bad in retrospect, true - and Paul Howes by agreeing to it at the time made his marital life a topic of public discussion. He implicitly asked to be judged as a family man then, and deserves to be judged now that he’s not.

That said, families are complicated and I’m inclined to Kortlang’s view:

Despite the appearance of Howes—Australian Workers Union boss and “faceless man” of the Labor movement—in The Australian Women’s Weekly three months earlier with his wife Lucy and children, his new relationship with the much-respected Wirth was known to many in business, political and media circles. Knowing the media as intimately as the couple do, each building their career with a solid working knowledge of the news cycle and how journalists operate, they should not have been surprised at the attention their romance received.

After all, the union movement including the AWU has been involved in a bare-knuckle dispute with the airline—a conflict that had come to a head a year to the day earlier when Qantas chose Derby Day to ground the fleet.

Predictably, the Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association called for Wirth to be sacked, a situation not helped when Qantas last week announced the loss of 400 maintenance jobs.

But has either Howes or Wirth professionally done anything wrong? Is Wirth receiving more scrutiny because she is a woman?

Strategic counsel Ian Kortlang said that there should be no issues for the pair “as long as they have declared the connection to their bosses and their bosses are confident they won’t be compromised”.

“If they lose that confidence from their constituents—Howes the union movement, Wirth her colleagues—it becomes an issue, but they should be allowed a normal attraction to who they like.”

The Climate Change Minister wants much more – to furiously vilify the Opposition Leader as “mendacious” and “deceitful”.

It’s part of Labor’s strategy to destroy Abbott’s character, and make a happily married and deeply moral community volunteer seem instead a woman-hating, lying, bigoted thug.

On Friday Combet piled on again: “I have never done what Mr Abbott has done – stood in front of people and wilfully deceived them.

He even used gutter language for which the media would crucifyAbbott: “Everything [Abbott] has said about this issue ... has been complete bulls---.”

True, Abbott has at times exaggerated the effect of the carbon tax on power bills, but Combet’s hypocrisy is stunning.

In fact, no party has more wilfully deceived people on global warming than Labor.

Which leader promised, “There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead”?

Which claimed their carbon tax will help stop dangerous global warming, when the truth is it won’t – and the planet hasn’t warned in 16 years anyway?

Which leader promised a “clean energy future”, only to release a White Paper on Energy last week admitting her 2050 “clean energy” targets were merely “illustrations”, with key green power alternatives such as geo-thermal and carbon capture nowhere near ready, and all needing an incredible $200 billion to install?

Which leader talks of “carbon pollution” when she actually means carbon dioxide, the gas we breathe out and plants breath in?

Which claims “countries around the world are acting”, when big emitters China, the United States, India and Japan all refused to join us last week in signing the second Kyoto protocol?

Which claimed “we’ll see agricultural land in the Murray Darling Basin no longer able to be used for agriculture”, only to have the drought there break and scientists deny global warming was ever to blame?

Sick of bulls--- on global warming, Greg? Then tell your Prime Minister to can it.

Is there a pattern? Should the partners of people being profiled be wary about who’s doing the profiling?

Having kept their fledgling relationship a closely guarded secret in recent weeks, ABC news presenter Juanita Phillips and climate change minister Greg Combet were seen yesterday enjoying the sights of his home town of Newcastle…

Academics refer to biographies as “The Study of Another Self,” which might explain how the process of writing one resembles an affair.

First, there is the intense and at times all-consuming focus on one other person. Then there is stuff you hope the larger world won’t find out about. There’s the courtship, when you write emails and place phone calls you hope the public will never see or hear as you woo your subject.

There’s flattery, seduction, and attempts to establish intimacy that you realize are a means to an end, but that if seen by others would be embarrassing and humiliating – to you.

On the other hand, the subject is under pressure to seduce the biographer - emotionally, at least - to ensure they are described lovingly.

UPDATE

About the last:

President Obama faced allegations of a major political cover-up last night over the resignation of CIA chief General David Petraeus, who had an affair with a married woman.

CHANNEL 7 spoke out yesterday about a tirade unleashed by former Home And Away castmember Melissa George, who threw a hissy fit on Friday’s The Morning Show because the segment referenced her days at Summer Bay…

George, who has appeared in The Amityville Horror remake, Grey’s Anatomy and Alias, said the Australian press were “disgusting” for constantly aligning her with the soap.

“I don’t need credibility from my country any more, I just need them all to be quiet,” she said. “If they have nothing intelligent to say, please don’t speak to me any more. I’d rather be having a croissant and an espresso in Paris or walking my French bulldog in New York City.

“I’ve never spoken out about it because I have to be the loyal good Aussie, who goes away and comes home.

“But I’m a really hard-working woman and people have to respect me for what I’ve done ... my next call will be to Home And Away to ask them to pay me because nobody does more promotion for that f ... ing show than me.”

Geoff Masters, the chief executive of the Australian Council for Educational Research, argues government policy to select teaching students from the top 30 per cent of school leavers is a “blunt approach . . . and falls well short of international best practice”.

In a submission to a Senate inquiry, Professor Masters says governments instead should set higher entry standards for teaching courses and reduce the total number being trained; assess teaching graduates to ensure they meet set standards before entering classrooms; and reward and recognise teachers of the highest standard.

As reported in The Australian this year, teaching courses have the highest proportion of school leavers with an ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admission Rank) of less than 50, in direct violation of the federal government’s commitment to increase the proportion of entrants with an ATAR of more than 70.

The journalism tutors who shouted down and manhandled Energy Minister Martin Ferguson last week are yet more evidence of the capture of journalism faculties by the Left. I cannot think of a single conservative journalism academic in the country - certainly not one who is an activist. On the other hand....

Global warming activists:

MARTIN Ferguson’s unveiling of Labor’s energy white paper was interrupted yesterday by two anti-coal advocates. The men, from the Melbourne-based collective Quit Coal—and both journalism tutors—took to the stage at the Committee for Economic Development of Australia event and heckled Mr Ferguson for about five minutes.

Labor apologist and activist in a campaign to silence Alan Jones:

[Jenna] Price, who started the Destroy The Joint Facebook page, remains equally unapologetic. The former Fairfax journalist who still writes opinion pieces and lectures in journalism at UTS Sydney, ... (said) “You know, this is not just about the Facebook page of Destroy The Joint or the Sack Alan Jones site, it’s about ordinary Australians finally standing up to someone who’s bullied them for years...”

[But in] one Canberra Times article, dated April 7, 2009, she lambasted a female flight attendant for getting upset when then prime minister Kevin Rudd allegedly shouted at her for giving him the wrong meal on a RAAF flight…

Price did not actually start the Facebook site. She seems merely the front person for an anti-Jones campaign in fact started by Sally McManus, a branch secretary of the Australian Services Union, and administrated by other women with strong Labor and union connections.

Aide in Labor’s campaign to crack down on the media:

STAFF in Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s office boasted about their “strong relationship” with University of Canberra journalism professorMatthew Ricketson days before he was appointed to co-chair the government’s supposedly independent media inquiry… The email, obtained under Freedom of Information laws, says “Please note that we know Matthew Ricketson well, he is extremely well regarded and we have a strong relationship with him..”

Loud and proud Labor voter:

Take Michael Gawenda:

I voted Labor. I could not imagine voting any other way. To do so would be a betrayal of my past. I had never voted for the Coalition.

David McKnight has come a long way from his position as a young Communist Party hack working for the revolution on the Communist Party weekly newspaper Tribune in the 1970s – to his current position as Associate Professor, Journalism and Media Research Centre, University of New South Wales.

Leftist activist:

Wendy Bacon is a contributing editor to NewMatilda and has reported for Crikey, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Conversation in recent times. She is an investigative journalist with a background in social activism who worked at the University of Technology for 21 years. Although no longer teaching at UTS, Wendy is still a Professor of Journalism at the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism.

Cultural relativist and Leftist:

Professor Catharine Lumby teaches her children a lesson:

My boys began by describing the woman caught up in this tabloid (Craig Thomson) saga as a ‘’prosty’’. A discussion ensued in which I explained my objections to the term. “Don’t use the word prostitute’’, I said, ‘’She’s a sex worker. What she does is work.’’

Let’s try other variations. “Don’t use the words standover merchant. He’s a muscle worker. What he does is work.”

Or let’s examine this phrase, from Lumby herself:

Why complicate things for shock jocks and right-wing commentators by encouraging young people to talk about how they negotiate sexual encounters…

Catharine: don’t use the words shock jock. He’s a radio worker. What he does is work.

Margaret Simons ... is the Director of the Centre for Advanced Journalism at the University of Melbourne, and is also the coordinator of the new Masters in Journalism… Simons is the founding chair of the Public Interest Journalism Foundation...In addition to her academic work, Simons is the media commentator for the online news service Crikey… Simons’ other work includes her prize-winning 2003 book The Meeting of the Waters, which examined the Hindmarsh Island bridge affair.

Here, as an example of the hostility to the News Ltd newspapers in particular, is an email I sent to a media academic at a leading university last year after being sent a tape by one of their astonished students. (To be fair, a list of corrections was read out in the following lecture):

I have listened to your lecture this week to first-year journalism students at xxxxxxxxx.

Your presentation on my court case was false or misleading in almost every detail, and unbelievably biased and hostile.

Your claims that I accused people of using their assertion of Aboriginality for profit is false.

Your claims that I “always” exaggerate and “always” put things out of context are defamatory, and also mislead your students.

Your claim that “Bolt’s always exaggerating things. He’s always taking things out of context and then he’s happy to get up in a court and say so” is false in every respect.

Your claim that I was charged with “racial vilification” is false.

Your claim that nine Aborigines charged me is false. The complaint was lodged by one. I was not “charged”.

Your claim that I was “booed” in court is false.

Your claim that I agreed my opinion in the case was “exaggerated” is false.

Your suggestion that I acted unethically is false and defamatory.

Your suggestion that I am “really, really, hated often”, with the suggestion that I’m hated by many, is, on my experience, false. Maybe by your friends and your colleagues, yes…

Your suggestion that I deliberately write to provoke is false.

Your claim that I came under “harsh” scrutiny in court on the grounds that I write for the Herald Sun is false.

Your claim that I wrote a series of Twitters is false. I never use Twitter.

Your suggestion that I hadn’t checked to see the qualifications required of the Aborigines applying for the jobs I wrote about is false.

Your suggestion that I consulted only my opinion in writing about their jobs is false.

Your claim that I said these Aborigines wrongly got jobs is false.

Your presentation on the News of the World scandal was vehemently one sided.

Your claim that Rebekah Brooks was sacked is false.

Your claim that Rebekah Brooks is Rupert Murdoch’s daughter is false.

Your warning to your students to trust nothing Rupert Murdoch said was a statement I might expect from some street-corner protester, but not a journalism lecturer.

Your attack on the Herald Sun as “pulp” is simply childish, and once again lets down your students.

Your sneering attack on Prince Charles was likewise childish.

The word etcetera is not pronounced “ec-setera”.

Is pushing your global warming beliefs on your students fair on those who do not share your faith? Is your disparagement of the news agenda of mass-market newspapers fair on those who take your course in the hope of learning enough from you to one day work for them?

Your knowledge of how the media works seems very scanty. It does not seem informed by any experience at any senior level in the profession. Rather, it seems informed by ideology and resentment.

I may be wrong in assuming that, but I’m at a loss to otherwise explain what seems to me an incredibly unprofessional lecture.

You are right to say “accuracy, balance and fairness” is essential in journalism. May I suggest you reflect on what you so glibly recite?

UPDATE

Reader JohnO:

.Monash University, Caufield 2011.. studying part time masters of business. I was in the building which hosts their school of journalism once a week.

One of the weekly tutorials was held on the journalism floor, my god… I walked past wall after wall after door on my way to the small dimly lit tutorial room each week which were festoned with Socialist propaganda.

Everything from posters of Stalin, Carl Marx, Bob Hawke and Whitlam, posters of giant windmills, United Nation symbols, iconography of Russia and China, banners for something called ‘The Australian Socialism forum’ and so forth. And these were right outside the offices of those who lecture and write about journalism and in some cases literally plastered onto the doors themselves.

Of course, there were also posters about conservatives, which often involved extremely vulgar languge and less than flattering pictures which has obviously been photoshopped.

This was a real eye opener for me, you can only imagine the bias these people would have if these are the journalism academics! Could you imagine trying to submit a paper or opinion piece on a topic that wasn’t left leaning in its bias?

The move has split the Country Liberal Party and the new Northern Territory government in which Ms Anderson is a minister.

It has also severely weakened NT Chief Minister Terry Mills, a friend and ally of Ms Anderson and Mr Abbott.

The federal Opposition Leader flew to Alice Springs with the express purpose of wooing Ms Anderson, the NT Minister for Indigenous Advancement and Regional Development, to contest Labor frontbencher Warren Snowdon’s NT seat of Lingiari at the next federal election.

Now the danger is that Abbott has signalled that the candidate for the seat isn’t his first choice. That said, the focus is right - win the election seat by seat.

The question now is not even whether Professor Don Aitkin will be found guilty or innocent under laws which can so severely punish the expression of an opinion activists don’t like.

The question is whether anyone at all will dare say anything on this subject - however true, important and well-meaning - if they risk being sued, financially ruined and publicly vilified as a racist:

SHANE Mortimer was wearing a possum-skin coat when he conducted a welcome-to-country ceremony at Parliament House in late August. But in the eyes of former National Capital Authority chairman Don Aitkin, he looked “about as Aboriginal as I do”.

Professor Aitkin, who is also a former vice-chancellor of the University of Canberra, wrote as much on his blog the next day.

Now he is the subject of a $6 million damages claim for “racist” comments that echoes the case of Andrew Bolt, who last year lost in the Federal Court over comments made about “light-skinned” Aborigines.

It would be harder for a judge to find against a vice chancellor rather than a conservative journalist. But who now would want the grief of finding out if they have permission to speak?

These ludicrous and oppressive laws against the expression of mere opinions are a sin against reason and a crime against our dignity and freedoms. They leave us dangerously vulnerable to the imposition to the New Racism and the tribalisation of Australian.

Sadly, the Opposition seems to be backing off its already too-limited commitment to repeal some of the most disgraceful parts of the Racial Discrimination Act now being used against Aitkin. It would be a tragedy if our freedoms were to be so lightly surrendered to the Left.

Tim Blair – Monday,November 12,2012 (9:36am)

Dr Brown was due to fly to Africa on Monday to speak at Rwanda’s Democratic Green Party conference, but was told on Sunday his visa, granted in late October, had been cancelled due to “contradictory messages” in his application …

“It says a lot about the Kagame government and its very determined efforts not to allow democracy in terms of having free and open political parties function in the country,” Dr Brown told AAP.

The Greens will dump their most hostile policies regarding private schools as they seek to lift their flagging poll numbers and reposition the party …

The party has suffered a series of setbacks in recent state and territory elections, most recently in last month’s ACT Legislative Assembly poll where the Greens vote fell by close to a third, leading to the loss of three of their four members.

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About Me

I'm author of History in a Year by the Conservative Voice aka History of the World in a Year by the Conservative Voice.

I'm the Conservative Voice.

I'm looking to make contact with those who might use my skill.

I have an m-audio mobile pre amp fed by the audiotechnica 2041sp condensor mic pack. Prior to 15/4/06, I'd used a Shure sm-58 that required a nuclear blast to register a sound or the internal mic of my aged imac, which has a penchance to recording my breathing. I also used a Griffin itrip, until the community convinced me it was not hiding my talent as well as the other mics.

I am a Writer and an occasional Math Teacher (Sir, what's the occasion?). I like to sing, having no instrumental talent (cannot even clap in time, and yes, I'm aware singing badly IS obnoxious).

I have performed the finale to Les Miserables before an audience of 500. I have also sung before a similar audience (students, parents) renditions of 'I Will' (Beatles), 'Mr Cairo' (Jon Vangelis) and 'I am Australian' (Seekers). Now I seek another profession because the audience hates me ..